Executives have been trying to align sales and marketing for years. Foundational to this is evolving the funnel. The split model approach no longer serves the experience expectations of changing business buyers, nor does it accommodate the plethora of Martech and Salestech solutions and the rise of Account-Based Marketing (ABM).

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Having a split funnel makes measurement a challenge. Different funnels have different quantifiers, and a split funnel forces sales and marketing to speak in two different languages. Leads are the language (and process) of marketers and accounts are the language of sales. This disconnect makes lead handover a challenge, resulting in process and timing gaps from lead acquisition to opportunity creation. 

In addition to this, there’s often no data or process around why accounts were disqualified, which would be valuable for retargeting, and account-based indicators can lag prior to opportunity creation, so there is a risk of underreporting marketing impact.

That’s why it’s essential to evolve the split model of the funnel because if B2B businesses put buyer-based insights back into the funnel, they will be able to accelerate their ABM efforts, thus driving more leads and ROI, which is always the goal.

A Unified Funnel 

The digital age has caused the lines between Sales and Marketing to blur. Now, Marketing has taken on a number of traditionally sales-oriented tasks, such as converting new leads from social media, email marketing and tracking actionable website visits. And, similarly, Sales are now using these channels to gain deeper insights into the buying behaviors of prospects and customers. This has caused both Sales and Marketing to work from the same, or unified funnel, and businesses need to be sure that they’re taking this approach when they’re developing their marketing and sales programs.  

If Sales and Marketing are working from separate platforms with two different sets of data they can’t truly create holistic, multi-touch programs. A unified funnel allows sales and marketing to talk to the buyer at every stage of the funnel, thus nurturing prospect relationships and improving the overall customer experience. Additionally, it makes for cleaner, predictable reporting and makes it easier to focus activity, investment and resources. Also, granular and shared metrics help to identify which channels are performing and accurately attribute ROI.  

Evolution can be difficult, but the digital transformation of the B2B landscape is unstoppable and calls for constant change to keep up. Without a shift in thinking and approach companies will not get the most of their ABM programs nor will they foster productive, revenue driven relationships with their sales and marketing teams.

The Benefits of ‘Smarketing’

To build a funnel that drives revenue, marketing and sales need to be aligned. Without a full understanding of sales goals and how to meet them, marketers cannot focus their efforts and pull in ideal customer profile (ICP) driven leads. And, if Sales doesn’t understand or have input into a company’s marketing strategy, they cannot convert leads into customers. 

Embracing a ‘Smarketing’ approach causes each team to lift one another up and fully utilize each others’ skills. It keeps a lead engaged at every stage of the funnel. ‘Smarketing’ also ensures that sales and marketing are talking to the same buyer, and not speaking to different members of the buying committee. Additionally, this approach helps to:

• Provide an opportunity for unified and consistent messaging that’s relevant to their customer’s sales stage 
• Allow sales to accelerate their efforts by prioritizing the hottest leads
• Improve team cohesion and the company environment 

By functioning collaboratively, marketers’ data combined with the personal insight provided by sales people can help businesses improve their retention rates by crafting a buyer experience based on joint insights. Additionally, ‘smarketing’ can reduce costs by making both teams more efficient and thereby shortening the overall sales cycle. 

Make it Relevant

Most people prefer relevant services and experiences when communicating and making a choice to buy. With a non-personal ABM approach, whole accounts are targeted rather than those key decision makers in the buying committee. This can be detrimental to your ABM program because the communication that is getting shared has a high probability of either not being seen and/or not resonating with the person who is actually interested in having a purchase conversation. Resulting in wasted time going after leads that don’t align with who’s actually making the buying decisions. 

To build a targeted approach sales and marketing needs to shift from one to many to one to few (i.e. only those on the buying committee). With this approach marketing and sales can develop campaigns that provide value and are based on relevant interests and pain points. Also, not only should communication be personalized, but it should be multichannel, seamless and easy for the potential buyers to move down the funnel.

Evolution isn’t easy, but it’s necessary because the success of one team is dependent on the other, so, any company serious about growth should seek to bridge the gap between the two departments and develop a unified funnel that allows the unique strengths of each (Sales & Marketing) to complement one another. Doing this will allow Marketing to deliver a real impact by proactively providing valuable and actionable target account insights to the Sales team. Conversely,  Sales can input these insights based on what will resonate with a company’s ICP. Taking this approach will allow sales and marketing to work from a ‘single-source’ truth and have them build their efforts from the same playbook.